Pete McMartin: Coffee and cannabis, a clash of manners on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive

Businessman defends men who sit on the sidewalk outside his coffee shop and smoke pot

John Neate is the owner of JJ Bean Coffee. Neighbours of Neate’s Commercial Drive location are upset with people congregating on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. Neate defends the group as law-abiding and for helping drive drug dealers away from his business.

Photograph by: Jason Payne
, VANCOUVER SUN

VANCOUVER -- On any given day, a group of men gather outside the JJ Bean coffee shop at Commercial Drive and Sixth Avenue, and there on the sidewalk of Sixth they talk and drink coffee and smoke pot and cigarettes. Sometimes they put out blankets and sell things, and they have been known to form a drum circle.

The group of men are predominately black. Some are native-born Canadians and some are from Africa and some are from Jamaica.

On Friday morning, there were a half-dozen of them outside on the sidewalk, but neighbours have said that the men’s numbers can easily grow to twice that or more, especially during the summer.

To the men, the sidewalk is their social club where, given Vancouver’s smoking restrictions, they can indulge.

But to some of the neighbours along Sixth Avenue, the men are a constant disruption. They have complained that the men block the sidewalk to pedestrians, that they litter, that they catcall at women walking by, that they are on occasion confrontational. They have also complained that on a block where families with children live, smoking pot in public, even in a neighbourhood as liberal-minded as Commercial Drive, is a non-starter.

“Many people in Vancouver,” said Drew Jackson, who lives on Sixth, “would take the perspective that, ‘What’s the big deal? They’re just smoking pot.’”

And that, Jackson said, was his perspective, too. He was in favour of the decriminalization of pot. And as a resident of the Commercial Drive neighbourhood, he considered himself as liberal as the next person.

But he was also the father of two teenage girls, he said, and they had been catcalled at by the men. And on a block with over two dozen school-age children on it, he said, he felt it was inappropriate that those children should be exposed to the open consumption of pot every day.

“Would we be OK if a group, every single day, cracked open their bourbon or their scotch or their wine on a street corner in groups of 10, 12 or 15 on a street where there’s 25 kids living? I don’t think we would.”

The men, for their part, feel that race may have something to do with the neighbours’ feelings (Jackson, for one, denied that), and the fact that the neighbourhood is being gentrified (a notion that Jackson, again, denied). The men say they have never given the neighbours any reason to be afraid.

“Nobody ever got hurt here,” said Alex Mondere, one of the men. “Nobody ever got mugged. It’s a bunch of f---ery. It’s the yuppies living in the neighbourhood who want it to be like the West End.”

As for the drugs, the men say, they say they don’t sell it, only smoke it.

“Nobody’s selling drugs here,” said one man who gave his name as “Obcdn.” “And (pot) doesn’t make you psychotic. It makes people get the munchies and support the local business.”

That local business is JJ Bean, owned by John Neate.

Neate said he understands the neighbours’ concerns, but he believes the men aren’t a threat.

“I’ve been here 16 years. There’s never been a police incident; in terms of my neighbours, there’s never been any charges of harassment. These guys are harmless. You know, they look different, so that’s a little threatening to some people because they’re not, you know, comfortable with different-coloured skin. … But there’s not been any break-ins, there’s not any aggression, (and) the police have done a number of undercover stings to try to identify drug-dealing.”

Neate also feels a debt to the men.

Earlier this week, a neighbourhood meeting was called at the Britannia Learning Centre, and the crowd of about 75 included Neate, city staff, local police, the Sixth Avenue neighbours and the men. At one point, Neate told the crowd that about 10 years ago, heroin junkies and dealers had moved into the neighbourhood, and had begun to use his coffee shop as a transfer point.

He hired a full-time security guard, he said, who one day found heroin stashed in the washroom. The security guard flushed it down the toilet. The dealer entered the coffee shop, Neate said, and threatened the security guard with murder if he didn’t replace the heroin. The security guard quit on the spot. When the dealer made the same threat to the manager, the manager also quit. Neate’s business was in jeopardy.

Then one day, Neate said, he caught one of the junkies trying to steal a couple of pounds of coffee. He phoned the police and was put on hold. It was then the men — the men who now gather outside his coffee shop — volunteered to watch the junkie while Neate stayed on the phone. Then, Neate said, the men told him not to worry, and they escorted the junkie outside. Neate never did find out what the men did, but the junkie, he said, never came back.

And between increased police presence and the men’s vigilance, the junkies stopped coming around.

“They saved my business,” Neate told me.

He had, he said, talked to the men about picking up their litter, not smoking on his patio, and that they generally mind their manners. But when several neighbours suggested that he ban the men from the coffee shop, he refused.

John Neate is the owner of JJ Bean Coffee. Neighbours of Neate’s Commercial Drive location are upset with people congregating on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. Neate defends the group as law-abiding and for helping drive drug dealers away from his business.

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